Curator of the "Garage" Ekaterina Inozemtseva about favorite books
ON WONDERZINE FOR A LONG TIME there are CONSTANT RUBRICSwhere girls talk about their favorite outfits and equally favorite cosmetics. Now we are launching a new series in which we will be asking journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and anyone else not about their literary preferences and about publications that occupy an important place on their bookshelves. Today our guest is the curator of the international programs of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art Ekaterina Inozemtseva.
Strangely enough, I do not have nostalgic memories associated with children's reading, although, out of family legends, I outrageously learned to read. I had two reserved books, which as a result turned into almost magical objects, because it was absolutely impossible to part with them - these are Olesha's Three Fat Men and the large, incredible gray-colored book of Janusz Korczak, King Matius I. Last scared me to eight years, I came to a state of absolute horror every time, turning the pages, not even reading them, but only looking at the pictures with a single boy - the king with huge eyes. I clearly remember my mother's fascination with Tsvetaeva and the whole Russian silver age in general: she recited to me by heart Khodasevich, Selvinsky, Northerner, of course, almost all of Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky. It seems that the rhythmic feeling of the poetic text comes from there, from the very natural coexistence of poetry and the daily course of life.
Then everything happened in the fastest way, so much so that I ended up at the philological department of Moscow State University, at the Romano-Germanic branch. My specialization was also determined quite early and quite unequivocally: thanks to the brilliant Juliet Chavchanidze, my entire philological and academic life I was engaged in German literature of the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. As a result, all this turned into a dissertation and a scientific degree, which was awarded in my department, among people who are very important to me, in the most disinterested, truly academic atmosphere. In general, when I was a little earlier, the department of foreign literature in philology was a completely unique phenomenon: the most free, powerful, with bold teachers and professors who simply rediscovered enormous layers of humanitarian knowledge, encouraging in us the interest and “newly converted”. Recall only Karelsky, Dmitriev, Kosikov!
In fact, I find it difficult to talk about reading as an occupation for which I find time or energy or create a special situation: I am professionally traumatized, if you like, that is, I read constantly, in any circumstances. Very often with a pencil. I read in three foreign languages, any trip or business trip turns into regular volumes. My shards are, of course, books. At one time, a lot of money and effort was spent on the purchase of library cabinets with glasses (dust - the main enemy!), Which I would have had at least 5-7 years, with removable shelves, of course. Because exhibition catalogs, as a rule, do not fit anywhere at all.
"Weaver and Visionary"
Mikhail Yampolsky
Reading Yampolsky coincided with the acquisition of its own academic language, its painful discovery. I wanted the same clarity, a special relationship to the fact in the history of culture, the ability of free, but motivated treatment with it. I believed in separate chapters of this book, admiring the architectural harmony of logical structures. After this book and in the course of returning to it, my attitude also changed towards the history of art, from which time disappeared, the sequence of transition from one to another. I think, thanks to the "Weaver and Visionary", a person is able to form a special sensitivity towards the most different phenomena in the history of culture, perceiving them as a vital experience, an immediate experience.
"Jacob's Room"
Virginia Woolf
Wolfe, I read avidly, almost immediately everything and, of course, diaries. We photographed this book from the popular ABC Classics series, which is all frayed in bags. These books were quite cheap - just under the student budget. For me, Wolfe — along with another 3-4 authors — is unconditional prose, the language of which changes the very structure of reality, complicating it, arranging some kind of folds, attacks, and pauses.
"Three jumps of Van Lun"
Alfred Döblin
This is, of course, about professional interest, about the titanic work of translators, because this is one of Döblin’s most difficult texts. Viscous, viscous, with which it is useless to fight, you need to catch his rhythm and relive literally physically. Separate interest is associated with the comments to this book and the preface, which were prepared by the brilliant Germanists Nina Pavlova and Alexander Markin. I don’t remember whether Markin’s diaries were already published in the Column, but I was a loyal anonymous reader of the magazine Untergeher and a terrible admirer of Bernhard, sharing the Austrian misanthropy in her adolescent rush. And Markina.
"Favorites. Historical Poetics and Hermeneutics"
Alexander Mikhailov
Germanist, musicologist, art historian, Heidegger’s translator Alexander Mikhailov, whom I never knew, is one of the few absolute figures for me. That is absolute in the full sense of the word. This is probably the most significant phenomenon in the Russian humanities, a global figure. With his texts associated mass of revelations, discoveries, experiences of a miracle, admiration. He demonstrated that type of knowledge and competence that today seems almost impossible; his work contains no approximate, inaccurate, arbitrary, or random assumptions. Mikhailov is commensurate and scaled to his heroes, because his experience is so powerful, sometimes painful.
"Diaries and letters"
Nikolay Punin
This book seems to have become a bibliographic rarity long ago. I was brought to her from Israel, and since then I value her very much. I was less interested in the love story of Punin-Akhmatova, although the book contains beautiful photographs and, naturally, all correspondence, a sample of a love epistolary genre. It was very important for me to feel the type of reasoning and the mode of action of one of the most brilliant Russian art historians and museum workers, Nikolai Nikolayevich Punin.
"A bunch of friends left by fate"
Anthology
Apparently, this book with an amazing page instead of a collection of poems by Alexander Vvedensky passes along the same line of “bibliographic rarities”. On this page, it was explained that even when "the present edition was prepared for print," V. Glotser, who represents the copyright of A. Vvedensky's heir, set out impossible conditions for publication. For the first time, published texts of the Harims, Lipavsky, Druskin Oberiuts in an anthology format looked almost orphaned in the absence of Vvedensky. However, this does not negate the importance and significance of the fact of the publication of this book: thanks to her, I discovered Lipavsky.
"Ilya Chashnik"
Vasily Rakitin
I literally mourn the disappearance of the Russian Avant-garde publishing house (RA), in which professionally prepared monographs devoted to avant-garde Russian artists were published. For example, Ilya Chashniki, performed by Vasily Rakitin, who, following the precepts of the Russian formal school, saves us from vague artistic criticism and controversial conclusions, offering a system of carefully verified facts that provoke self-reflection and a special type of reading pleasure.
"Memories of a collector"
Giuseppe Panza
Quite a significant place in my closet and in life (I'm not talking about fetishism) is occupied by exhibition catalogs and endless books on art, but the listing of loved ones in this category turns into a completely different genre. Therefore, here are the memoirs of a brilliant man, a connoisseur, a collector, an Italian who collected a phenomenal collection of American art. I really want to once this book appeared in Russian, because it is a fascinating story of unselfish love.
"Talk about Russian ballet"
Pavel Gershenzon, Vadim Gayevsky
Leisure of the heart and physical pleasure from the text. Connoisseurs who are infinitely convincing in their knowledge and sometimes a little arrogance. It is difficult to come up with a more attractive combination.
ARTEMPO
Formally, this is the first part of the exhibition catalog of the trilogy, organized by Dutch antiquarian and collector Axel Wersworth. Essentially - a great exhibition, which for many years has become a model and has generated a huge number of imitations and epigone versions. For me, it turned out to be a key experience in perceiving space and building visual correspondences. The catalog is a unique example when the exhibition itself and the publication accompanying it were synchronized. Which does not explain, does not comment, and continues to exhibit in two-dimensional space.
